Sotto la quale rubrica : Pre-reading the Comedìa

Abstract

Sotto la quale rubrica:Pre-reading the Comedìa K. P. Clarke die Schwelle ist der Platz der Erwartung —Goethe This article examines a neglected aspect of the early circulation of Dante Alighieri’s Comedìa, namely the phenomenon of furnishing each canto with a rubric in vernacular. Focusing on one of the most celebrated witnesses of the poem, Milan, Biblioteca dell’Archivio storico e Trivulziana, MS Trivulziano 1080 (henceforth Triv), the essay argues that the rubrics prepare the reader with what one might call a “pre-reading” of the work.1 It will further argue that the rubrics are sites of hermeneutic value, filtering the poem and priming the reader for what is to come; the rubrics can be said to set up a reader’s horizon of expectation. Paying particular attention to the rubrics to the first canto of each cantica, this article contends that these opening folios in Triv reveal a richly textured interface between the reader, the poem, and the book. The discussion that follows will articulate its central claim of the value of Triv’s rubrics in several discrete parts. Firstly, it will introduce and contextualize the manuscript, highlighting its centrality in philological discussions of the text of the poem. Second, it will briefly outline the reception of Triv’s rubrics, emphasizing the curious fact that despite being included in Giorgio Petrocchi’s critical edition of the antica vulgata, they have been largely overlooked when considering early reading strategies of the poem. Triv’s rubrics are an important nodal point articulating the text for the reader, rendering a highly innovative and novel poem navigable [End Page 147] for its contemporary readers. The rubrics often show signs of a critical language still “under construction,” still in a process of development and maturation. Finally, the article will examine in detail the rubrics to the first canto of each cantica, arguing that these crucial, liminal moments in Triv are richly grounded in a discourse of metatextuality, deploying a carefully chosen lexicon in describing the poem and in their presention of the figure of Dante as auctor. The Trivulziano manuscript Triv is amongst the earliest securely-dated manuscripts of Dante Alighieri’s Comedìa. The quality and authority of the text copied in it has placed the manuscript firmly at the heart of philological work on the poem. Triv comprises 109 folios, measuring 370 × 255 mm; the text of the Comedìa is copied in two columns in what has been described as “lettera bastarda su base cancelleresca,” in the (gorgeous) hand of Francesco di ser Nardo da Barberino.2 In addition to identifying the scribe, a colophon, on f. 103v, dates it to the year 1337.3 Francesco di ser Nardo is a key figure amongst a group of scribes who copied manuscripts of the Comedìa in Florence between the 1330s and the 1350s, now commonly referred to as the “officina del Cento.” These “Cento-type” manuscripts were copied with remarkable similarities in script, support, format, and page design (a bastarda cancelleresca script, on parchment, medium-large in size and in two columns).4 Triv is illuminated on the opening folio of each cantica with historiated initials and marginal illustrations occupying the bas de pages; these are attributed to the Master of the Dominican Effigies, one of the dominant figures in Florentine illumination in the second quarter of the fourteenth century.5 The illuminations in this manuscript signal, in the words of Francesca Pasut, “a fundamental accomplishment in the Master of the Dominican Effigies’ reflections on the text he illustrated.”6 Triv is familiar to readers of the Comedìa as it has been central to attempts to determine the textual tradition of the poem.7 Giancarlo Savino even posited that in the “look and feel” of the book we witness a mise en page that had its roots in the material form Dante himself envisaged for his poem.8 Recent philological work has seen the authority of the text witnessed in Triv as increasingly in flux, nowhere more persuasively demonstrated than in the very important work now emerging from Paolo [End Page 148] Trovato’s collaborative project aimed at establishing a critical text of the poem...